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Effective intraverbal responding often requires control by multiple elements of a verbal stimulus. The purpose of this study was to examine the emergence of such intraverbal relations following tact instruction with compound stimuli and to analyze any resulting error patterns. Participants were seven typically developing children between 3 and 5 years of age. After being taught to tact four overlapping compound stimuli that differed along color and shape dimensions, participants were tested for emergent intraverbal responding. Three participants performed with high accuracy and four with intermediate accuracy when correct intraverbal responding required control by multiple elements (i.e., color names and shape names) of the verbal stimulus. Five participants performed with high accuracy when intraverbal responding required control by only a single stimulus element, and all participants showed emergence of reverse intraverbal relations when the response required naming only a single stimulus element (i.e., color or shape). There was an insufficient number of errors to perform detailed error analyses at the individual level, but overall, the first element of a verbal stimulus was more likely to exert control over the response than the second element, and color words were more likely to exert control than shape words. Results suggest that individual stimulus elements acquired independent control over the responses that had been established as tacts.

We evaluated the effect of interfering with echoic responses during stimulus pairing on preschool-age children's responses in tact probes. During stimulus pairing, children viewed presentations of national flags paired with the spoken names of the corresponding countries. In the echoic condition, participants were required to vocally repeat each name as it was presented. In the blocking condition, participants were required to perform the presumed incompatible response of labeling the color of the background on which the flag was presented. In a third condition, there was no response requirement. Emergent vocal tacting of flag stimuli was evaluated in probes. Four of five participants' behavior during stimulus pairing was affected by the experimental manipulation, but tact emergence varied across participants and conditions and seemed unrelated to the manipulation. The results are congruent with other research on the functional role of the echoic in emergent tacting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the replicability and generality of a previously reported training sequence effect on emergent conditional discriminations in the intraverbal naming task. In Experiment 1, a tact–intraverbal (TI) group learned first to vocally label 6 visual patterns and then to intraverbally relate pairs of verbal labels, whereas an intraverbal–tact (IT) group received the same training in the opposite sequence. Emergent conditional discriminations among pattern stimuli were assessed in match‐to‐sample (MTS) format. Experiment 2 was identical, except vocal tact and intraverbal training were replaced with selection‐based training in which the verbal labels were text stimuli. Compared to the IT sequence, the TI sequence resulted in greater mean accuracy at test (Experiment 1), higher yields (Experiment 2), and shorter reaction times (Experiment 2). Experiment 2 data suggested the TI group's performance might be less dependent on intact intraverbal relations relative to the IT group, but related to participants' reports of visualization during intraverbal training. The results suggest the sequence effect is replicable and occurs in experimental preparations commonly used to study derived stimulus relations. They also provide novel support for the hypothesis that participant behavior during training alters sources of stimulus control available at test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Six typically developing children between 5 and 7 years of age underwent match-to-sample training to establish three-member equivalence classes after first acquiring a unique name for each stimulus. Horne and Lowe's (1996) naming hypothesis predicts that under those circumstances, match-to-sample training contingencies may establish intraverbal relations between the unique names, which in turn guide correct responses on a subsequent test for stimulus equivalence. Following training of baseline relations (AB and AC), participants received an equivalence test followed by an intraverbal test. Performance on the two tests co-varied, such that three participants passed both tests, and three participants failed repeated administrations of both tests, including a modified version of the equivalence test designed to promote intraverbal responding. The participants who failed the equivalence test, however, did so primarily due to poor performance in transitivity trials, but performed accurately in symmetry trials. After training of a third relation (BC), all three participants performed accurately in a symmetry test for the remaining untrained relations (BA, CA, and CB); two of them in the absence of relevant intraverbal repertoires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assessed the emergence of visual–visual conditional discriminations following training of vocal tact and intraverbal relations. Ten preschool-age children learned to vocally tact six visual stimuli, A1 through B3. Next, they learned to respond intraverbally to the dictated names of A1, A2, and A3 by vocalizing the names of B1, B2, and B3, respectively. Emergent A-B and B-A relations were tested in a visual–visual match-to- sample (MTS) task. Five of ten participants passed the test, with or without a prompt to tact the sample stimulus. Four of the five failed a reverse intraverbal test that involved responding to dictated names of B stimuli by vocalizing names of A stimuli. The remaining participants failed the MTS test, apparently due to failures to maintain the trained vocal responses throughout testing. Accurate MTS performance in the absence of bidirectional intraverbal relations appears to contradict Horne and Lowe's (1996) analysis of the possible role of intraverbal naming in emergent stimulus control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]